There’s a theme running through many of my horror reviews for Film on the Internet, and it’s are “the terrifying pressure of social interactions with near-strangers.” I may have to stop gravitating towards these films of creeping, frog-boiling social unease and boundary violations, however, because it’s hard to top Speak No Evil‘s commitment to the form. (It really needs to stick with the literal title translation of Guests.)
Danish director Christian Tafrup’s 2022 film is beautifully shot, but right from the start, the often breathtaking visuals are under-girded by an intense, doom-laden score that’s almost too much to take. The contrast between the two veers back and forth between ominous and darkly comedic, forcing us to ask the same question as the characters: How seriously can we take these bad vibes?
Danish couple Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) and Bjørn (Morten Burian) are on vacation in Tuscany with their daughter, the sweet, happy, and pampered Agnes (Liva Forsberg); they meet and befriend Dutch couple Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) and Karin (Karina Smulders), and their shy, closed-off son Abel (Marius Damslev).
Patrick showers them with compliments–Bjørn is a hero for backtracking to retrieve his daughter’s lost toy rabbit! Everyone could learn something from Louise’s vegetarianism!–and Bjørn, in particular, responds to it. He finds his pleasant domestic life just the tiniest bit suffocating, and he’s drawn to Patrick’s expansive spontaneity. When, after their return home, they get a postcard from Patrick and Karin inviting them for a visit, it’s Bjørn who maneuvers Louise into agreeing, subtly painting her initial refusal as a killjoy move.
The film is highly attuned to the nuances of a couple’s interactions with the rest of the world, especially the distinction between the relative honesty between partners and the social masking necessary with the rest of the world. There are some judgments and fears you can only whisper to the person next to you. When you have to say them in a normal voice, to a more hostile listener, they sound harsh and jarring.
It doesn’t take long to realize that Patrick and Karin are using these social constraints against their visitors; the courtship is over, and now they can subtly (and not-so-subtly) push, belittle, and embarrass their guests, testing how much Bjørn and Louise will accommodate them, seeing how much ground they’ll give up. The answer, unfortunately, is a lot. Patrick and Karin can rewrite the rules of normalcy far faster than Bjørn and Louise can ever assert them. There’s a horrible point in the film where it’s entirely plausible that everything hangs on this nice Danish couple’s ability to stop caring what these people think of them. Be rude! Refuse to explain! Don’t let them turn the tables on you!
Once the full extent of the horror in Speak No Evil is revealed, the external logic doesn’t hold up for a moment, but the emotional reasoning works with a devastating, almost fairy tale-like simplicity. (Fitting, for a movie that consciously evokes Hans Christian Andersen.) You have the woods, cursed food, mutilation, a Bluebeard homages, and an inverted cuckoo’s nest. It makes as much nightmarish sense as these things ever do, and it trades its psychological horror for something more mythic with relative smoothness.
Speak No Evil is streaming on Shudder.
